UIWP Small Memories
Hlinka, Laura
>>LAURA: I don't remember being read to, I'm sure that I was. What I remember most was that my mom and I would have word games and I would name long lists of words that rhyme and it was continually, it was a dynamic list that changed all the time and words that are opposite. So I still have those lists that we created forty years ago. My dad not so much, he grew up on a farm where you were up by six AM, that's when you had breakfast before the first round of chores. Reading and writing were not very much emphasized and he was very much a farm boy and workhorse and very into the chores. My mother would sneak off and read in the bathroom; that was her quite time when she went in the bathroom and would read. My dad read the Bible. There's no specific memory of what writing was. It was always a lesson; I wrote because of what was assigned. I can't remember exactly when I was starting or learning to read but in second grade it was exciting and a challenge that the more books you read and every book you read you got to be a circle of part of the caterpillar that went around the classroom. So my goal was to read as many as I could and I would count the page numbers to see the shortest ones so I could finish them earlier to get more pieces of the caterpillar. So that's the part that was important to me; the more pieces of the caterpillar that I had that's when I felt successful.